Monday, March 3, 2014

Battling The Man in the Mirror: The Dangers of Body Image

Above are the photos you,
presumably, wanted to see. And I showed them to you first in the hopes of
grabbing your attention and not losing it. For as long as you’ll let me go on,
I hope I’ll have that attention undivided because I’d like to tell you a secret.
I don’t look like that. Sure they’re photos of me and fellow model/actress
Christie Philips, but neither of us, at this moment or any moment other than
right now at the top of this page, look exactly like that. Why’s that? Because
those images are photo shopped. Oh, they’re also pictures of us after having
gone through make up, been spray tanned, covered in oil, and put in front of a
very talented photographer who could make a rock look dynamic, original, and
interesting. It’s called manipulating an image of something that is technically
unreal and presenting it to your audience as something that is real. Whether
that something is good or bad is sometimes hard to discern but, as for today, I like
to think it’s good. Because more than I want to talk about fitness, diet,
nutrition, chiseled abs, or glistening muscles, I want to talk about something
much more important that affects all of us if not at least in some small way. Body
image.

They’re all terms I’m sure you’ve
heard; obesity, anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, muscle dysmorphia,
the list goes on. They’re not good words by any means and all of them carry the
weight of society telling us that we, as human beings, are fundamentally
flawed. What we are and who we are, on the outside, the way we look, is simply
not good enough. Magazines, movies, television, and the rest of society tell us
how skinny we should be, how muscular we should be, how you’re not pretty
enough and simply not good enough. What much of the world around us is
communicating is, at this moment, who you are right now is fat, out of shape,
and disgusting. And it’s awful. This is a trend that has been around for many,
many years and, sadly, as we continue to promote nearly unobtainable goals as
the "easily achievable" standard it seems to be getting worse.

You can’t judge yourself against
actors and models because the people in them tend to always be thin,
attractive, and well built men and women that make their living out of being,
basically, a walking, talking body image. A lot of these brands represent a
very small minority of people who are able to make their sole focus looking
good. They are paid to live a lifestyle that isn’t practical for just any man
or woman, but practical only to those who have copious amounts of free time and
a paycheck that supports their continued pursuit of the perfect body.

Chances are that isn’t you.

But a lot of us feel the pressure,
day in and day out, to be something we’re not. Whether that applies to our
work, our family lives, our friends, or our bodies, there always seems to be a
constant force working from the outside trying to get in, to remind you that
you’re not perfect and that that’s not okay. You should be perfect. Because
that’s what magazine covers and movies suggest.

Well I call bullshit. The purpose
of living a fulfilling and rewarding life is to recognize how imperfect you
are, and revel in it to a certain degree. To acknowledge your imperfections is
to embrace your personal perfection. Who you are to the rest of the world is
always going to be imperfect, but who you are to yourself should be perfect
because you’re you and there has never been and never will be another you.

But more and more we’re dealing
with a rise in eating disorders and body image issues in both women and men.
Despite the empowerment that new technology like the internet and social media
can provide, there’s always going to be people who look to tear you down and as
a result the wheels of progress in ridding the world of societal standards are
spinning in place. And it begins with faulty standards. There are two sides to
every coin. Just as eating disorders are still on the rise so are obesity
rates, and much of how these relate to our body image issues comes from the faulty
standard by which we “measure” ourselves. In my opinion it is fundamentally
flawed and seemingly designed to set one up for failure. It’s called the BMI or
Body Mass Index. Most studies are done utilizing the BMI calculator, which
takes your height and weight in order to find where you fall on the chart and
is broken down into four components. Underweight, (a BMI of 18.5 and below), Normal weight (18.5 – 24.9), overweight (25 – 29.9), and
obese (30 or greater.)

My BMI is
26.2. Which means, “techinically”, I am over weight. But the word “mass” in the
term “body mass index” is more about the total mass you carry around in
relation to your height. Granted my BMI is not severely overweight, but because
I have a greater amount of muscle mass than the average person, I am
considered, by the BMI’s standards, overweight. I am over the arbitrary median.

When you
understand the broad definition and how the BMI works, it becomes more a
general tool for the average person who does not have the time or money to put
a severe focus on diet and exercise like a professional model or actor would. But
because of how general it can be, we've become accustomed to using it as an
example of, basically, either how “fat” or how “skinny” we are. A lot of these
numbers and terms are wreaking havoc on our body images. What we see when we
look in the mirror, how we think other people perceive themselves, etc. And
this is equally as toxic as the other side of the coin.

Did you know…

80% of
women say the images of others in movies, television, and magazines make
them feel insecure

42% of
girls through the third grade desire to be thinner

81% of
ten year old's are afraid of being fat

Because
of the average woman’s build versus those chosen as “models”, women’s body
image has gone haywire. The average woman is 5’4 and weights 140 lbs. But
the average model is 5’11 and weights 117 lbs, making models thinner than
98% of the rest of American women.

More
than half of teenage girls think they should be on diets

91% of
women feel they are unhappy with their bodies

58% of
college girls are peer pressured into losing weight and/or dieting

Surveys
show 30% of women and 20% of men would agree to cosmetic surgery at some
point in the future.

4% of
girls have induced vomiting to lose weight and 15% have resorted to
fasting (or not eating) in order to do so

95% of
people with eating disorders are between the ages of 12 and 25.

And
only 10% of people suffering from an eating disorder will seek
professional help.

These numbers should cause outrage. They’re not getting
smaller and they’re not going away. And, in addition, they are now on the rise
in boys.

3% of
boys induce vomiting and 8% are fasting

10 to
15% of people suffering from bulimia or anorexia are male

Eating
disorders in college men ranges from 4-10%

A
recent study on a large university campus found that the female-to-male
ratio of positive screens for eating disorder symptoms was 3-to-1

Over
the last few decades, the body image concerns of men have increased from
15% to 43% . These rates are comparable to those found in women.

Between
28% and 68% of normal-weight males think they are underweight and desire
to increase their muscle mass through diet and exercise

Because
of gender role conflict and masculine ideals considering seeking help to
be a negative, men with eating disorders are less likely to get
professional help than women.

More
and more men and women are now being affected by Muscle dysmorphia, a
subtype of body dysmorphic disorder, in which people obsess about being
inadequately muscular. This behavior will include spending hours in the
gym, squandering excessive amounts of money on ineffectual sports
supplements, abnormal eating patterns or even substance abuse.

Again, rather than getting better
with time and technology, these issues are still growing and getting worse. And
just as I mentioned prior to the above statistics, the flip side of this
unfortunate coin is also the rise of obesity in both our Country and the rest
of the world.

In America,
only an average of 31% are considered to be of normal weight, or are even
considered “underweight”. 33% are thought to be overweight, a stunning 35%
are obese, and 6% of this group is considered extremely obese. This means
roughly two thirds of Americans are overweight and one third of them are
obese. 3 of 4 men are considered overweight or obese, and both men and
women share a similar number for those considered obese, about 36%. (Keep
in mind, this specific statistic is likely pulled from a collection of
BMIs, so the percentages, in reality, are floating. However, even with a
margin of error of only a few percent, these numbers are still
staggeringly high.)

Since
1960, the amount of those considered obese has doubled, from 13.4% to
35.7%. That’s only in the span of nearly 55 years.

Studies
show that in children ages 6-11, only half of boys are getting the
recommended 60 minutes of physical activity each day, and only 35% of
girls of that age are getting the same.

For
all children, ages 6-11, an average of 42% are getting the required hour
of daily physical activity, but for adolescents, ages 12-15, only 8% are
getting the same amount of exercise. And all studies reflect that physical
activity declines with age.

It’s no doubt that obesity is on
the rise in both adults and children. We’re living in a processed, high fat,
high carb, high sugar world, where every snacking option available to you is
either bad for your health, or tastes bland. Fruits and veggies rarely quench
anyone’s sweet tooth or grumbling tummy because they aren’t loaded with
artificial ingredients designed to make them taste out of this world. The
statistics for junk food put the Obesity epidemic into perspective.

Roughly
one in four Americans eats fast food every day.

Americans
spend over 110 billion dollars on fast food every year. This money is
enough to end world hunger several times over.

McDonald’s
alone feeds over 45 million people every day, which is almost more than
the entire population of Spain.

If you
were to eat a big mac, large fires, and a large soda, you’d need to walk,
non-stop, for six hours in order to burn off all of its calories.

On
average, a single meal at a fast food restaurant contains all the calories
you will need for an entire day.

French
Fries are considered the most widely consumed vegetable in America.
(Which is saying something considering it ISN’T a vegetable. Technically,
botanically, potatoes are vegetables but nutritionally speaking they’re
not. They are starches.)

Junk
food is responsible for roughly 35% of the world’s heart attacks.

For people
who have a Starbucks a day habit, they could save nearly $1,000 a year if
they made coffee at home.

It’s
actually a myth that healthy food costs more than junk food, mostly
because these studies are done based on a cost-per-calorie measurement.
Healthier foods contain less calories than junk or fast food, which
technically means less energy. But considering we’re over eating to begin
with and need to be consuming less calories and smaller portion sizes,
healthier food is comparable. (But this shouldn't even be an issue to
begin with. Junk food created by science costs less than the things your body
really craves, things found in nature, not found in your kids’ science
fair project.)

We’re dealing with foods whose
ingredients lists are in the dozens and dozens, many of which, even those
considered “healthy” options like a Nutrigrain Fruit and Yogurt bars, chicken
sandwiches, and “Energy” drinks, have more than 25 ingredients, many of which
are all artificial. The honors, unsurprisingly, go to KFC (Kentucky Fried
Chicken) for having the longest ingredient list on earth contained in their
chicken pot pie. It boasts a whopping 100 different ingredients which, to give
you an idea of the science fair junk you’re putting into your body, is listed
here:

All that is one chicken pot pie.
Just one. And what’s most troubling is
that people have no clue, many of them having no care even to learn what
they’re putting inside their bodies. It’s simpler to rationalize it down to
thinking, “Chicken, vegetables, and crust.” All the while we’re drinking “diet”
soda and sprinkling “magic powder” (I’m looking at you Sensa) on our chili dogs
and expecting it to help us lose weight.
And a lot of the time, just as we’re led to believe we are imperfect and
fat or ugly, we’re simultaneously led to believe that the junk making us
overweight in the first place is not so bad for us because the box tells us
they’re good for us. A box of Poptarts has a fun little circular label that
reads: “Good source of 7 vitamins and minerals.” More like a good source of
cake for breakfast. Bill Cosby would be proud.

Most important is that both of
these epidemics, eating disorders and body image issues as well as overeating
are simply not getting better. They’re getting worse. And it’s all because
we’re being fed mixed messages at all times. We’re always reminded of how out
of shape we are yet we should be rewarding ourselves on a hot day with a
refreshing Coca-Cola. It’s madness. And the true work that goes behind
professional models and actors who are in that Super Hero or Spartan shape is
unbelievable. As a public we also feel, because society encourages us to, that
eating generally well and working out for 45 minutes to an hour per day at moderate intensity is
enough to get us looking like Hugh Jackman or Jennifer Aniston. Even beyond the
knowledge that how these images are altered is the unwritten truth of
everything else that goes in to creating the body society thinks you should
have. It’s not a walk in the park folks, it’s a lot of dieting, blood, sweat,
and tears, and supplementing to generate a result that’s then repackaged and
marketed as something like, “SIX PACK ABS IN 30 DAYS GUARANTEED!” Which is an absolute fallacy.

My goal in all of this is that I
want us to put our focus on being healthy and fit, not on being skinny and
shredded. Strong is the new skinny, so when I say fit I mean putting your heart
to work every day in order to take care of it and prevent disease, to get you
to a body fat percentage that means you are taking care of yourself, that’s
you’re not obese but also not stick thin. We like to say, “define normal”, but
to a large degree there actually is a norm for our bodies, and that norm is
healthy and functional, not abused or deprived.

So finally, let’s get back to the
photos at the top of the page. I’d like to get to the nitty gritty of what it
truly takes for the average person (a 26 year old male in my case) to get into the shape society wants you to
believe you can have if you just eat more salad and step on the treadmill for a
half hour a day. I decided to take on
this project as a means of showing people how, literally, impossible it is for
any human being on the planet Earth to look the way society pretends some do
and we should. That shredded photo of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine? Lighting,
makeup, and photo shop. That flawless ad for makeup starring HalleBerry
or Jennifer Lopez? Lighting, makeup, and post production. The most important
thing to remember is that what people are pitching to you isn’t even how these
individuals look in their regular day to day. Just like me. I became involved
in fitness as a hobby and now as a passion just over three years ago. I’m 26
today. When it started it was for the inevitable reasons. I wanted six pack abs
and to look like a stud. Big arms, broad back, wide chest, big calves, you name
it. I wanted it for the reason most people do, and we shouldn’t deny it, to
turn heads. It’s, as are so many things in our lives, a body image issue. Who
you are here and now is not who you want to be. Who you want to be is Hugh
Jackman or HalleBerry or Jennifer Lopez. But we’re not taking
into account that even those people aren’t truly “those” people without the aid
of some movie magic, a strict diet, and a hell of a lot of exercise.

I want to expose a lot of the myths
behind what goes into a magazine photo shoot. When you flip through most
magazines or TV channels what you’re seeing is the end result of a lot of time
and money. Do these celebrities work very hard in order to be in the shape that
they are? You bet they do. And I think it’s commendable. Though it should be
known that the finished product goes beyond their hard work, meaning the final
image presented to the viewer is one that is unreal. And I think celebrities,
and many of them are open about it, have a responsibility to make known that in
the off season, when not filming for getting ripped for a certain part or
shoot, they eat and behave just like we do.

So to be as much of a walking, talking example
as I could I wanted to put myself through what was about half of a bodybuilders
contest prep. I was already in good shape beforehand but, in order to get as
lean as possible within 8 weeks, I drastically altered my diet and consumed
things I wouldn't normally, as well as upping my daily exercise. This is the
truth about me, about those photos, and about most of the things that flood
your mind day in and day out that feed the body image issues all of us are
already dealing with. And it’s a hard one.

For 8 weeks I cut out all forms of
carbohydrates. Aside from my weekly cheat meal I eliminated alcohol, sweets,
and all types of “junk food”. I was eating, primarily, lean proteins (chicken,
turkey, pork, fish, red meat), steamed vegetables, one piece of fruit per day,
and one protein shake post workout. I ate 5 to 6 times a day and meals usually
went as follows:

Drinking
1 gallon of water a day and 2 gallons a day in the week leading up to the
shoot

And that was that. To a larger
degree it was the paleo diet save for the fact that I was eating peanuts.
(Which are technically legumes and not nuts.)

Keep in mind this drastic cutting
type diet had been done after I’d worked through a bulking phase in which you
consume more calories than your body requires in order to drastically build
muscle size. During a “bulking” season (primarily November through February), I
was consuming between 3,500 – 5,000 calories a day. A lot of that came from
Mass Gainer shakes, 4 scoops of which provide well over 600 calories, massive
amounts of peanut butter, bananas, meats, etc. and I often ended every night
with desert, usually ice cream.

Now, here’s the real secret. On top
of this, I was taking supplements. And I’m not talking just a multivitamin and
some emergen-c. I mean I was taking SUPPLEMENTS and lots of them. And no, they were not steroids, but stacking all of the supplements I
was had an incredibly negative effect on my body probably not unlike banned substances. Was I overjoyed to take them
all? No. But I wanted to replicate what someone would likely take (a male in my
case) in order to get into the magazine or the contest shape society leads us to believe we
can all achieve with a better diet and a little exercise. I wanted to go to the
extreme so when it came time to writing about it I could do so from personal
experience.

Diuretics
(in the final days leading up to the photo shoot) which facilitate in
flushing your body of excess water and can be dangerous as they can often
lead to dehydration.

So, not only was all this terribly
expensive but it also wreaked havoc on my body, eliminated my sex drive, and
made me sluggish and tired around about 3:00
PM each day. I was consuming tremendous amounts of caffeine,
creatine, and stimulants found in both the pre-workout supplements and also in
the fat burners. The thermogenic supplements of the fat burner gave me an
irregular heart rate that made me worry. My body was, for 8 weeks, essentially
redlining.

On top of all this my workouts were
lasting between two and three hours daily, five times a week. Many times I
would be working out twice a day in order to get in the requisite stuff. So needless to
say, come dinner time and sundown each day, I was done. But hey, look at those
photos of me. I sure look good don’t I? All shredded, and buff, and handsome?

But that’s
not who I am. If I were shirtless near you today, I’d just look like I was in
“okay” shape. Because it’s important to remember that those key words,
“shredded”, “buff”, “handsome”, “ripped”, etc. that magazines scream out at you
from the shelves every time you’re in the grocery store are like the colors of
McDonald’s advertising. They’re designed and tested and proven to get the
desired result, selling their product. And we keep buying it. They keep telling
us how imperfect we are and we keep trusting them and it’s killing us on both
sides of the spectrum. We’re either not eating enough or we’re eating too much.

The biggest part of the secret here
is the photos below are ones we took, as part of my experiment, about 5 minutes
before the photos at the top. The difference? No makeup. No interesting camera
angles, no special lighting, and no flexing, just me hanging out being me. So
knowing all that, the following photos are entirely natural and the true result
of 8 weeks of incredibly hard work and supplement usage.

And my counterpart, Christie, thankfully was not on the same regimen as I was. We're very different, obviously, and it should be a perfect example that diet and exercise is often different strokes for different folks. Find what you like, what works for you, and stick to it. She has an extensive background in martial arts with a third degree black belt in Karate and a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. She says she prefers staying in shape by having fun, not by doing typical workouts. She water skis almost every weekend, hikes, dances, zumbas, does yoga, plays racquetball, and is a former American Gladiator when it made its TV comeback a few years ago. (Exactly.)

Her diet is a miracle. She never eats the same thing two days in a row and believes in calorie confusion, so her daily intake ranges between 2,500 and 5,000 calories which is, depending on what her activities are, how much she burns in a day. She says she's in the minority of people who's always had a high metabolism and pretty much each whatever she wants. Her body responds more to carbs and fruits than it does to protein and vegetables. She's a great example of someone's body being entirely different than mine or yours, which should encourage us to learn more about our bodies and what works for us. But mostly I'm going to chalk it up to her epic fitness background and the fact that she's the only woman in her Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class which she says if she does more than three times a week she ends up looking like the incredible Hulk. Needless to say she's a hard worker who's been a fitness role model her entire life, especially considering she's never let her weight fluctuate more than 5 pounds and has weighed the same, except when pregnant, for 25 years. She's a dedicated, take no prisoners, shining example of what hard work really looks and sounds like.

And what do you
have? A normal looking guy and gal. Granted I’m a little bigger than most and Christie is quite obviously in great shape, but this comes
from our exercise regimens and diets. But do we look the way someone on the cover of a
magazine does? If you passed by us in a public park would you think, “Good Lord
it’s the Wolverine and Red Sonja!” I don't think so. What you see with Christie is what years of unending hard work looks like and for me, I'm happy to be the example of what hard work looks like but also someone who has been utilizing extensive
supplements. For someone like me, if I want to look the way I thought I was supposed to, I have to be taking all the junk I was.

But this is how all of that looks without movie magic. If all
magazines, movies and TV had their actors and actresses looking like this would
you feel so ashamed of yourself? Because many times that’s how it seems they're making you feel; that you should be ashamed for looking the way you do and
not looking impossibly perfect. And to give greater context, here are the final images, as seen above, shown side by side with the originals. Keep in mind make up is part of them at this point in the shoot, so highlighting the muscles is apparent, but one has had photoshop work while the other has not.

Well no one looks
perfect. Not any celebrity on earth, not you, and certainly not me. And the
proof is right here in this post. Most men and women believe it’s possible to train and diet
enough so that they can look skinny, toned, and/or shredded at a moments
notice. That you could throw your shirt off and walk around looking like these two.

That's Greg Plitt and Jamie Eason, two Bodybuilding.com spokespeople and fitness gurus who I know for a fact work incredibly hard and take amazing care of themselves. I begrudge neither of them a single ounce of who they are and what they do and I look to both of them for guidance in my pursuit of fitness. But I'm encouraged to remind you that they are not you and they are not me and unless you dream of being a fitness model, they are not who you should be measuring yourself against. These are not "average" people who spent an hour in the gym each day and ate generally well. They are precise, trained, professional athletes and models who do this for a living. They are the extreme minority.

So I'm here to
tell you to stop judging yourself against impossible standards. I’m here to
tell you that, whatever it is that you want out of fitness or your nutrition,
to do it for the right reasons, that no matter how hard you try you’ll never
look the way society tells you, you can and should. It is impossible. You
cannot do it. No one can. Even after the rigorous exercise routines and the
strict diets it still requires technology to make you look that way. And even
for bodybuilders, models, and actors, maintaining such a dangerous diet or
supplement and exercise regimen in the long term can be incredibly dangerous to
your health.

Eating disorders
are a very serious problem. Obesity is a very serious problem. It seems that in
a day and age in which technology and communication should be pushing to make
these problems better it isn't doing a thing. They’re only getting worse. And all
of it ties back to that one thing that all of us deal with; body image. And I’d
be a liar to say I don’t suffer from degrees of muscle dysmorphia. I want to
open up with you all as much as I can to show you that, to different degrees,
we’re all dealing with our own body image, for better or for worse. I can tell
you that when I wake up in the morning and do my stereotypical flex in the
bathroom mirror (because face it, we all do it) I’m not happy with what I see.
There’s always some small problem. A group of muscles is not as defined as it
“should” be, as big as it “should” be, the abs are not as defined as they
“should” be, you’re not as toned or shredded as you “should” be. And truth be
told, it’s all bullshit, because who you “should” be is not who society tells you.
Who you should be is who you are.

If you or
someone you know is having trouble with any of the issues we’ve discussed above
then be there for them, support them, and aid them in seeking help. No one on
this planet can do the extensive damage to you that we are capable of doing to
ourselves. And that’s all based out of how we see ourselves, our body image,
and much of that is now a byproduct of how society tells us we should look,
think, and feel. In order to make money they need not only your allegiance to
their brand but they also need you to feel you are not good enough and only
they can help you feel better. And all of it is untrue. You are good enough.
But it takes support from friends and family to get you to believe it.

I want you
to fight back against societal constraints. I want you not to take”no” for an
answer. I want you to believe you ARE good enough. I want you to take care of
your mind and body. But most of all I want you to believe in yourself. This can
be a dangerous world to live in but only if we let it. That’s because we
convince ourselves it’s us against them, that we’re alone, that the empathy and
sympathy of others isn't good enough. But please, don’t shut us out. We’re here to
help because, on some level, we all deal with the same issues to greater or
lesser degrees.

If you just need a
person to talk to about this, help or friendly advice on your diets or
workouts, or someone to open up to (anonymously even) to find a way to
stop the pressures of society, to make a change and start believing in
yourself, in who you are and what you’re capable of, please contact me. You can
do it right here through this blog. But you’ve got to be willing to reject the
image you currently carry of yourself because even though, at this moment, you
and I don’t know each other I can tell you with 100% certainty that you are
designed to be an incredible person. You might not feel that way right now but
I promise you, I promise you, you will. You’ve just got to reach out and ask
for help. Don’t let yourself just be another unfortunate statistic. Be who you were meant to be.

4 comments:

Really excellent essay, Will! I've been trying to 'watch what I eat' as of late and it's nothing short of shocking the more I read labels. You have great insight here that I needed to read -- and I'll hazard that other people need to hear too. I think we need to get you on a Ted talk or something!

I hope that other readers will also experience how I feel after reading your article. I feel very grateful that I read this. It is very helpful and very informative and I really learned a lot from it. medicine shoppe franchise opportunity